Fonality, Trixbox, and is Microsoft Asleep at the Wheel Again?
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Oct. 4th, 2006 | 01:52 pm
Congratulations today should be give to Fonality who just made one of the best acquisitions of the year.
http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-kea
So why is this big news? Trixbox is the distribution for telephony on Linux today. They have put together a vertical Linux distribution dedicated to telephony. It combines Asterisk with a web based interface backed by MySQL, integrated into the SugarCRM solution. As Redhat today is the LAMP of the IT Enterprise and Web Framework, (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/PHP), Trixbox is the LAMP stack of the Telephony market, Linux , Asterisk, MySQL, Perl/PHP.
Fonality just moved into first place for the telephony linux vertical stack, and this is a trillion dollar market, one in which Microsoft doesn't have the technology to respond with.
Today the online world for Telephony is like the world for networks at the beginning of the 80's. Google, Skype, and the rest are creating their own lakes hoping to become the ocean. The same could be said of Compuserve, AOL, and Prodigy around 1993. Telephony on the internet is not about being locked into any single provider, it is about being able to talk to anyone, anywhere.
Trixbox fits into the puzzle in two ways. First it creates a clear solution for a PBX, the center piece of telephony communication in a company. Second, which is more long range, being a SIP server it allows companies to hook themselves into a peer-to-peer SIP network. Companies can call other companies all over the internet, and Trixbox should enable ISP solutions where any Internet user can talk to any other user. SIP is the keyword in this paragraph, since SIP is the HTTP of the Telephony world.
What about current mobile users? Fonality today hosts gateway services to the world of the legacy telephone network. We are a number of years out before mobile phones are IP based so this service will need to exist for some time to come. Being a gateway service for now is a good way to make money until all telephony becomes IP based.
Think all of this is amazing? There is more. Trixbox comes with a Customer Relationship Management solution, aka a CRM system, which is the dynamo behind all sales organizations. For the last two years I have been talking about Trixbox in my presentations at O'Reilly's Open Source Conference. The first year I asked "Who here knows what a CRM system is?" only a few people raised their hands. This year? Nearly the entire room.
CRM systems are no longer the domain of the enterprise IT organizations. Having a telephony system integrated into CRM system show the potential of what can be done with a telephony linux distribution. There are just an amazing number of possibilities that this opens up.
Congratulations to Fonality on their entrance into the Linux Market.
http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-kea
So why is this big news? Trixbox is the distribution for telephony on Linux today. They have put together a vertical Linux distribution dedicated to telephony. It combines Asterisk with a web based interface backed by MySQL, integrated into the SugarCRM solution. As Redhat today is the LAMP of the IT Enterprise and Web Framework, (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/PHP), Trixbox is the LAMP stack of the Telephony market, Linux , Asterisk, MySQL, Perl/PHP.
Fonality just moved into first place for the telephony linux vertical stack, and this is a trillion dollar market, one in which Microsoft doesn't have the technology to respond with.
Today the online world for Telephony is like the world for networks at the beginning of the 80's. Google, Skype, and the rest are creating their own lakes hoping to become the ocean. The same could be said of Compuserve, AOL, and Prodigy around 1993. Telephony on the internet is not about being locked into any single provider, it is about being able to talk to anyone, anywhere.
Trixbox fits into the puzzle in two ways. First it creates a clear solution for a PBX, the center piece of telephony communication in a company. Second, which is more long range, being a SIP server it allows companies to hook themselves into a peer-to-peer SIP network. Companies can call other companies all over the internet, and Trixbox should enable ISP solutions where any Internet user can talk to any other user. SIP is the keyword in this paragraph, since SIP is the HTTP of the Telephony world.
What about current mobile users? Fonality today hosts gateway services to the world of the legacy telephone network. We are a number of years out before mobile phones are IP based so this service will need to exist for some time to come. Being a gateway service for now is a good way to make money until all telephony becomes IP based.
Think all of this is amazing? There is more. Trixbox comes with a Customer Relationship Management solution, aka a CRM system, which is the dynamo behind all sales organizations. For the last two years I have been talking about Trixbox in my presentations at O'Reilly's Open Source Conference. The first year I asked "Who here knows what a CRM system is?" only a few people raised their hands. This year? Nearly the entire room.
CRM systems are no longer the domain of the enterprise IT organizations. Having a telephony system integrated into CRM system show the potential of what can be done with a telephony linux distribution. There are just an amazing number of possibilities that this opens up.
Congratulations to Fonality on their entrance into the Linux Market.
too bad they are using MySQL
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moabtek
date: Oct. 5th, 2006 12:48 am (UTC)
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I can always judge the professionality of a product by the fact that the architects decided to use MySQL (often heard in the same sentence as PHP).
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Re: too bad they are using MySQL
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brandong00
date: Oct. 5th, 2006 01:05 am (UTC)
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Re: too bad they are using MySQL
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moabtek
date: Oct. 5th, 2006 01:21 am (UTC)
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Google has some good ideas but with programmer demand, I can imagine that a few fools make it into the company and make very bad choices. If Google has any sense, you will see them replace MySQL with a relational database soon.
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Re: too bad they are using MySQL
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brandong00
date: Oct. 5th, 2006 01:30 am (UTC)
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While it may be "ideal" to use a relational database, business/objective requirements are more important. Successful projects/companies can fix their technology later, while the developer's who used the "right" technology at the company that failed will simply move on to their next job.
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Re: too bad they are using MySQL
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moabtek
date: Oct. 5th, 2006 02:00 am (UTC)
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I have a least a dozen database's under my belt (relational, object, xml...) as far as experience goes and now am pouring through the manuals of MySQL because of client requirements, and there are so many items and features with this product that seem to be an afterthought, rather than original by design, as is with any other database I have used.
These afterthoughts are making it somewhat combersome to implement the business requirements that I am faced with. It just seems like more work that I have to do, that I would not need to do elsewhere. Maybe other projects do not worry about these things, but when you are required to get the numbers right, I get very paranoid about storing and making sure the data is safe and related in the ways it should be. With other databases, I do not need to worry as much. It is inherent in the design.
you get the last word.
over and out.
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brianfey
date: Oct. 6th, 2006 04:12 pm (UTC)
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Dude.
According to this you live in the middle of BC!
http://ljmaps.robobeasts.com/viewmap.ph
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krow
date: Oct. 6th, 2006 06:12 pm (UTC)
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brianfey
date: Oct. 7th, 2006 02:54 am (UTC)
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